Me and G

She insists on staring in the mirror before bedtime, gaping at the cellophane texture of her skin—it’s worsening with age—she thinks. Ever since she turned 30, it’s been a wish-wash of luke warmth, “my decay, my existence,” she groans. But nothing new…it’s been that way since she was little, when her father started questioning her when she’d get up for second helpings at dinner “do you need more?” Yes! I need more—I am starved for the heaps and mounds of velvet kisses with strangers, naked dancing on the beach in silver moonlight, tearing morsels of fat crisped crackled skin off a roasted chicken. And sometimes, I’ll slip into the director’s chair of her dreams where I orchestrate a feast: trapped in a doughnut shop during a zombie apocalypse, alone at an all-you-can-eat buffet. But she intervenes and wakes up! Before getting her fill. 

I want it all for her, I really do. Because we share the same longings. That’s the madness of it all. We think of Joni Mitchell, all those lovers she caught and released, but her true love is her “I.” Maybe “I” am the artist? But she stops and stops and asks so many arbitrary questions—what if I fail? Is this the right decision? How will I ever do that? Sometimes, we merge together in the feeling that boils hot in her gut, and synchronize a swim, our words spilling out. “No!” is my favorite. So often I watch her say things she doesn’t really mean—to a waitress at a restaurant, or her boss, even her closest loved ones. This makes me so mad—how can she dismiss me like some pesky gnat?! 

I tried to leave her once, in the scratchy crotch of California when she was all but doubts and doubts and doubts and it seemed she stopped listening to me. But I was always pulled back when she opened her journal—a space where we exist in tandem. She, the mother crocodile and I, the bright green babe sitting like a lantern in her mouth.

Gianna Marie Starble (she/her) is a queer writer, runner, and dog mom currently finishing her degree in Professional and Creative Writing at Central Washington University and interning for the Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series. In 2020 she won second place for best creative non-fiction piece in the Write On The River competition. She will be attending the University of Idaho in the fall of 2022 for her MFA in Creative Writing.